That is not what happened with Mary and me. I am not blaming her but digging her out of the landslip that day, using Captain Cury’s spade and racing against the tide and the rocks that rained down on either side of us, seemed to drive us apart rather than bring us closer. It was a miracle Mary survived, and intact as well, especially given Captain Cury’s terrible suffocating death just a few feet from her. She had bad bruising up and down her body, but only a few broken bones—some ribs and her collarbone. This kept her in bed a few weeks—not long enough to satisfy Dr. Carpenter, but she refused to convalesce any longer, and soon reappeared on the beach, bound up tightly to keep the bones in place. I was amazed she was willing to go out hunting again after what she’d been through. Not only that—she did not change her habits, but went back to pacing along the base of the cliffs, where landslips could come down. When I suggested that Molly and Joseph Anning would understand if she did not want to go back to hunting, Mary declared, “I been struck by lightning and buried in a landslip and survived both.
